Blake Shelton is back with new music for the first time in two years and he’s looking to keep things exciting like his idol, Conway Twitty did throughout his career.

“Every time I make a record, I try and take a step in some other direction,” Shelton said when sharing why he decided to record the new single, “Texas.” “Whether it’s a step forward — sometimes it’s a step backwards,” he laughed. “Just something different than I did the last time.”

He continued, “I always loved Conway Twitty for that reason. If you listen to his entire catalog, if you listen to every record, he’s kind of all over the place with what he did and he kept it exciting. He was a song guy more than anything else. I want to be that also.”

Keeping things different, exciting and song-driven is exactly what Shelton did with the new single, which he admits took him some time to come around to since it’s unlike anything he’s ever recorded. “I first heard the song and I thought, ‘I love the song, but I don’t think I could get away with doing that.’” He shared. “I just had a hard time picturing myself singing it because it’s so different than anything that I’ve ever done before.”

“When I finally told Scott Hendricks [producer], I said, ‘OK, I’m going to try ‘Texas,’ and he said ‘Oh, thank God…’ And we had a blast when we got in there and made that record because we kept trying things, we messed with it so much.”

From an ode to “The Good The Bad and the Ugly,” to the sounds of a hawk,Shelton says there’s lots of sonic surprises if you listen closely. “We were having so much fun with it and we had to stop because they told us it was time to release the song, so here we are,” he laughed. In addition to the surprises added via production, there’s also several references to the King of Country, George Strait throughout.

“There’s several George Strait references in the song and they kind of flew past me,” Shelton said of the first time he listened. “The first time I heard it, I heard it mention George Strait but then I was going, ‘On, no. There’s ‘Amarillo By Morning’ and there’s ‘All My Exes Live In Texas.’ The song is super fun even though it’s about a guy getting dumped.”

Hear even more about the song, new music as well as one of Shelton’s most classic hits, “Austin,” by listening to his entire interview with Audacy’s Rob + Holly on the Friday Night Takeover above.

Words by Monica Rivera, Interview by Rob + Holly

Photo: Bryan Steffy/Getty Images,